Why Haven’t You Gotten Me a Job Yet?

From time to time, our recruiters receive calls from frustrated job seekers asking, “Why haven’t you gotten me a job yet?” To answer the question, here’s an imaginary conversation between one of our recruiters–let’s call him Rick–and an imaginary job seeker, Joe Smith, who is an experienced, high-level, professional candidate:

JOE: Hey, Rick, I left a message with your employment agency last week. I’m looking for an upper management position and wondered when we could meet to talk about my resume and see if you could help me find a job.

RICK: Yes, Joe, I got your message, and I have your resume right here. Before we talk about your resume, let me just share with you the way our recruitment firm earns a living. As you probably know, we don’t charge candidates a fee. The way we work is that we have ongoing conversations with clients about their open positions. When a client gives us a job order, that’s when we begin searching for candidates who are a good fit.

JOE: Oh, I see. So you’re waiting for a job order for my type of position?

RICK: Exactly. And you can see from the job board on our website the types of jobs we get orders for. Once we get an order, we search our database and all the networks that are available to us. That’s why it’s important for candidates to go to our website and post their resumes into our database. Our work is to find qualified candidates who match the job’s requirements and arrange interviews with the client. We act as the middleman to help candidates put their best foot forward and help clients get what they need. After we’ve helped negotiate a job offer from a client to their top candidate and the candidate accepts, that’s when the client pays us for finding them a new team member.

JOE: Okay, I understand, and of course I want you to get paid for helping me if you find me a job.

RICK: Well, I’m happy to take a look at your resume and make some suggestions. But you can see that, until I have a job order that fits your qualifications, I can’t submit you anywhere. In the meantime, here are some suggestions I can make:

Use more than one resource to look for open jobs. Besides posting your resume in our database, check out CareerBuilder, Monster, Indeed, and every possible referral from your own personal network.

Get your resume in order to present the best possible you to your future employer. We can talk about that more in a minute.

Spend more time on your networking efforts, both with personal and social media such as LinkedIn and Facebook. Some experts say that you should spend 60% of your job-seeking efforts on networking alone! This is because more people land jobs through personal referrals than by applying for a job as a complete unknown.

Sharpen your skills. While you’re in limbo, use this time to get a new certification, learn a new piece of software, or even take a college class. Besides giving you a new skill, this will show employers that you’re a lifetime learner.

JOE: Yeah, as soon as we’re done here, I’ll get to work on updating my LinkedIn profile. I haven’t looked at it in a couple of years.

RICK: That’s great. Also, be encouraged that this is a candidate-driven market and knowledge workers are in high demand. With your skills and experience, it’s only a matter of time before the right job comes along. Now, let’s talk about your resume…

Candidates, we have customers all over the United States seeking top professionals with well-rounded skills. If we don’t have the most current version of your resume, click here to post it, and visit our job board while you’re at it! You or a friend might be a good fit for one of our open positions.